Sycamore Series

Sycamore study #730, watercolor, 9 x 12 inches

I've been painting a lot of pictures of trees.   I have a favorite sycamore along our creek.  It is damp and covered with moss and vines.

The trick here is to suggest the idea of woods without spelling out all that chaos.   Lots of marks.  

Here is the second version: 

Sycamore study #731, 9 x 12 inches

The paint did more of the heavy lifting here and I'm in love with the stuff going on just to the left of the trunk. 

Now to try it bigger.  Much bigger.

Next version:

©Robin Edmundson, 'Sycamore - 733', watercolor, 18 x 24

Painting something that much larger requires a rethinking of many aspects of the piece.  Mostly it means larger brushes and a lot more paint preparation.   I like this more the more I sit with it.  I like the light, the moss, the balance of paint runs and marks, the lights and darks.  It feels like a friend. 

I'll be submitting this to the Hoosier Salon this year.   

Sycamore Bark

If you've been reading the blog for any length of time, you'll know that I fangirl over trees a lot. 

I am in love with sycamore trees.   They give our southern Indiana woods a very different character from the darker northern oak-filled woods. 

These are the shaggy trunks of younger sycamores. They are maturing, but no longer saplings.   I love that texture.  And those colors.   And the white peeking through. 

Frozen

These are sycamore balls [seed puffs] trapped in the ice of our creek.   I thought they were cool.   And the ice is pretty, too.

If I squint my eyes and try really hard, I can pretend it's July and these are black eyed Susans.  

Bare Roots

This tree sits on the creek.  It's a sycamore and the wood bleaches white in the summer.  The roots are washed bare and they curl around all sorts of stones.

Stump the Reader

This is a gorgeous stump.  

What's more - I actually know what kind of tree this is.   So, bonus points for me because generally I have no idea whatsoever what a tree is unless it has leaves.   I'm good at leaves. 

Game rules:  Tell me what you can about the tree from these pics.

Click to biggify.

Here's a close up of the stuff going on in the center.  

We're guessing ants, but that's just a guess.

If you want a hint, there's a pic of the logs below the fold.

Sycamores - the ghostly trees

I grew up in northern Indiana, where the winter woods are dark - full of oaks and maples and locusts.  Down here in southern Indiana, our winter woods are haunted by the ghostly forms of sycamores, whose white trunks show up through the darker trees.   It's surprising how they change the character of the woods from a distance.

Sycamores are big trees.   Big, brittle trees.   Don't put one near a structure.  

They have long elegant branches, beautiful huge leaves that look a lot like a maple leaf on steroids, and really interesting, round seed heads.

They love creeks and damp meadows and since this area is full of creeks and damp meadows, we have a lot of them.

The soil is exactly right for cultivating them, so they often grow in small clusters, where the seeds from another one have dropped.

I love sycamore bark.   It's mottled in shades of white and grey and is unmistakable when you meet it.    Click on the pic, left, to get a closer look at this beautiful bark.

This time of year, the seed balls hang like ornaments from the tops of mature trees.  

Can you pick out the white sycamores in this pic of the woods?